Chicago Public Golf

I checked out the Wheaton Center for History golf exhibit called the Fairways, Greens & Clubs Exhibit. It was really cool.

The history of golf in this area is rich. The Chicago Golf Club, in Wheaton, was the first 18 hole golf course in the USA (1892). It was finished slightly earlier in the year than Shinnecock…I think. However, the first golf course in the Chicago area was not The Chicago Golf Club, but some course in Lake Forest, but it was only like seven holes or something so the The Chicago Golf Club gets all the fame because it was 18 holes.

The Chicago Golf Club actually originated in Belmont (now Downer’s Grove) before they moved it to Wheaton. It was only 9 holes in Downer’s Grove though. There is still a little friction between Wheaton and Downer’s about who was first and who is more important. The Downer’s course is now the Downer’s Park District course I think. There are pictures and other memorabilia relating to C.B. Macdonald, the architect. He was very prolific and quite a character. The staff has a lot of good stories about the guy and about other famous golf personalities associated with Wheaton.

This is only a smattering of the information that you can get by spending a few hours in the Fairways, Greens & Clubs exhibit in downtown Wheaton. For $7.50 you get a guided tour through about four rooms full of golf memorabilia. There are four people on the staff at the Center and a couple of them are always on duty. I went there with my wife and mother-in-law and we had the place to ourselves. We spent about two solid hours there and had both staffers at our disposal for questions. I would have liked to have spent more time on the golf side of things, but my wife and mother-in-law were highly interested in the exhibit on the Eastland Disaster, so I relented and pretended like I cared.

I want to spend another couple of hours at this place. I think I am going to plan an outing at Cantigny or Arrowhead and then head to downtown Wheaton for some history and some food. The downtown is full of great restaurants so it works well as a great after-golf option if you are with that special woman (or man, depending on, you know, what you like).

Check out this interesting post at Point 1 Golf. Point 1 Golf is a Chicago golf blog that I suggest you add to your blogroll.

The post speaks to growth of the game and the fact that it has been stagnant recently. He points to a Golfweek article by Bradley Klein who poses that maybe part of it is that “fewer gen-X’ers are growing up as caddies.” Which makes sense. I’m a Golfweek subscriber and Bradley Klein always has some good stuff to say, so I look forward to reading it. The writer, I think his name is Tom, paints a couple of possible scenarios, both worthy of getting me to jump start my efforts, however humbly, to grow the game.

I have a lot of theories on how we (yes, that includes you) are going to get this game back on track. We have to go on a mission to grow this game and 2007 will hopefully be the year when we turn the beast around…at least in Chicago. Here’s where I’m going to focus my efforts:

• Provide a forum for combining golf with other life-enhancing activities (food, fitness, and entertainment) in and around Chicago (Chicago Golfcast).
• Simplify the game and make it less expensive for all with a detailed theory on equipment and playing venues (Trunksmasher Golf).
• Help the community through golf in some way, shape, or form.

Stop back often.

In no particular order, comments…suggestions?

1. Have a bias for walking. Walking 18 holes gives the round a more natural rhythm than riding.
2. Fourteen clubs is too many clubs. A set of substantially fewer doesn’t detract materially from your score and could make you a better player. Plus, it saves your back and shoulders.
3. A golf weekend away with 3 or more members of the same sex does not make you a bad spouse, an uncaring boyfriend/girlfriend, or a neglectful parent.
4. Memorize the entire contents of your golf bag.
5. When you arrive at the course, if the bag boy drives up to your car while you’re putting on your golf shoes to see if you “need help with your clubs,” you should politely decline and disregard any reprisal from the bag boy or your playing partners.
6. Have a desire to grow the game and make golf more accessible to those not as passionate or proficient as you.
7. Playing an emergency 18 holes after already playing 36 because “there are at least 2.5 hours of daylight left” is normal and is an acceptable alternative to “having a few beers by the pool” or “getting a good steak.”
8. Always have a towel handy in the trunk to wipe off a small space on your back bumper to sit while you put on your golf shoes so you don’t get dirt on your ass.
9. Bag-drop, what’s that? Couldn’t it damage my clubs if you drop them?
10. A five hour round is not stressful and waiting on half of your shots should not be met with bitching and moaning. Actually, this situation could be construed as relaxing. It gives you more of a chance to converse with your playing partners and contemplate the resolution of world problems.

In the wake of the Mark Wilson victory, I felt the need this morning to look through the scoreboard in the sports page to see how he was doing this week in Tampa. I grabbed both papers in the Starbuck’s and glanced at the scoreboard thinking that his name, along with other Chicago connected golf pros, would be in a boldface font for easy recognition. Not so for either of our city-based papers, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times.

I don’t get this. In the past 24 months I’ve had occasion to read the print versions of the Palm Beach Post, the Orlando Sentinel, and the Denver Post. Each of them puts local players in boldface font in the print editions. Is that too much to expect? Maybe it is. If I have any readers in other cities let me know if your local folks are highlighted somehow in the scoreboard. Maybe I’m nuts and nobody is doing this anymore.

Where is everybody on this issue? Should I organize a write-in campaign to get the names of players like Luke Donald, Jeff Sluman, Steve Stricker, and Mark Wilson in boldface? Or am I just a whiny baby with too much time on my hands?

Boy, this Mark Wilson story is just great. Our main man Ed Sherman has not been updating his blog that often but he has vindicated himself with the this piece on Thursday in the Chicago Tribune.

I may just start milling around in the Western ‘burbs just on the off chance that I run into Mark Wilson running some errands so I can say “dude, you kick ass!” Not only is it a great story that this local journeyman finally won on tour, but he did so after assessing himself a two stroke penalty, thereby upholding the integrity of the game and the integrity of all Chicagolanders (even though he is a Packer fan).

If you haven’t heard, on Friday of the tournament he heard his caddie tell another caddie what club he hit. You can’t do that. It doesn’t matter if it’s you or your caddie, neither can give or receive advice in competition to/from another player/caddie, period! He told a rules official and was assessed a two stroke penalty. Then he still goes on to win.

Read Sherman’s article and let’s starting getting into Chicago golf. Also, relish the 50+ degree day we are going to have and get fired up because the season is right around the corner.

Check this out. I’m banging through the Sun Times today at my favorite McDonald’s and Len Ziehm has a great article from the PGA Tour. Mark Wilson, who lives in Elmhurst and plays out of Cog Hill, won the Honda Classic and the accompanying $990,000 in a four man playoff. Keep in mind, Luke Donald, Evanston resident and Northwestern graduate, won this same tournament last year. We [Chicagolanders] rock the golf world and this is further proof that Chicago is the best golf town in the country.

I watched a lot of this tournament this weekend. There were very few big stars down the stretch but the drama was huge. If you’re a fair weather golf fan that watches only when Tiger and Phil play, then you’ve cheated yourself out of some great theatre.

Let me tell you something about Mark Wilson that you may not know unless you were watching on Saturday. He loves to run errands! Yeah, I’m serious. They showed a little taped interview with him about mid way through the Saturday telecast and he says basically that he loves to run errands. Actually, he couched it in these terms, “I love to check things off a list.” He goes on about how he likes it when his wife gives him a list of stuff to do and he figures out the quickest and most efficient way to get it done. Wow, these guys are good…husbands!

I can picture him running around the western suburbs grabbing a gallon of milk, picking up some duct tape from Home Depot, then hitting a bucket of balls at Cog. How cool is that? Congrats Mark.

I’ve always thought this was a cool term ever since hearing it used a bunch in my college days. All of the finance majors wanted to work for a bulge bracket investment bank like Morgan Stanley or Goldman Sachs. It was a term used to identify the “largest and most profitable” investment banks in the world.

Well, I’m going to use this term to identify the golf courses in the Chicago area that basically have it all. The bulge bracket golf courses are the courses bulging with amenities and features that make the overall experience comparable to a high end resort course or country club. The kind of places where you can take a few clients and show them a first class experience that leaves them wanting for nothing, except more of your products or services.

These courses, for the most part, have:

• Top name designers
• Beautiful bent grass on greens, tees, and fairways
• Grass driving ranges
• Full locker room facilities
• Decent eating and drinking options
• GPS on carts

So far I can only think of nine of them:

• Cantigny
• Cog Hill Golf & Country Club
• The Glen Club
• Seven Bridges Golf Club
• ThunderHawk Golf Club
• Harborside International
• Prairie Landing Golf Club
• Stonewall Orchard Golf Club
• Bolingbrook Golf Club

What do you think? Notice that Pine Meadow or George Dunne are not on the list even though the golf courses are top notch, mostly because they don’t have the clubhouse and locker room facilities. White Deer Run may be a candidate, but the bar is kind of dumpy and I think it only has one shower. I would like to put Makray on there, but it’s young and does not have a top name designer. Hey, this is a tough list to make.

I sit here looking out over the vast landscape of cold and snow in Chicago, wondering how I’m going to make it to the spring. We have some great tournaments coming up on TV and we’ll even get to see Tiger Woods in a few weeks at the Match Play, but that really doesn’t make spring in Chicago feel any closer.

When these things get me down, I go to the internet and try to simulate that feeling of looking at golf courses, thinking about single-hole strategy, and appreciating the fine design of a great architect. I can do that at the site of Bolingbrook Golf Club.

It is a decent golf course and we’ll have a review sometime in 2007. But for now, let’s just sit back and appreciate the website. Spring feels very close when you go the course tour. They have a narrated fly-over for all 18 holes. As with the clubhouse, they did not skimp at all at the website. What muni has enough cash to hire a helicopter and write code to embed this in the website? Well, probably one that charges around $90 a round.

Alright folks, Mr. Sherman has promised in his golf blog, Bunker Mentality, to update it more frequently now that the Super Bowl is over. He says:

Now that the Bears are finished, we can devote our attention to a real sport: golf.

I like it Ed, and I am going to hold you to it. In fact, I too am dusting off my own golf blog and will begin posting again. Not necessarily because the Bears are done, but because seeing Pebble Beach in HD really motivates me.

The 2007 season is right around the corner. Heck, March is like 18 days away or something so we need to begin our prep for some serious Chicago golf. How about beginning with the following three steps:

1. Set up a link to this blog and Ed Sherman’s blog to keep you informed.
2. Get your clubs out of storage and make sure your equipment is ready for a round of golf at any point after March 15.
3. Make a list of your 2007 golf goals (more on that later).

Stop back soon.